Normal as a Wedding

Ginny looked spectacular in pale gold bridesmaid’s robes, just as Fleur
had predicted. Gabrielle looked lovely in them too, for that matter,
and so did Fleur in her simple white gown. Harry sat, looking up at the
three of them, and realized that perhaps doing without a love life was
going to be neither as easy nor as good an idea as he had thought last
month.

It had seemed so straightforward in June. He had realized
that he was putting Ginny in danger, and that he needed to concentrate
on getting rid of Tom Riddle. In the wake of Dumbledore’s death, Harry
had felt guilty taking pleasure in anything, even in her. But as Bill
and Fleur exchanged vows, flanked by Ginny and Gabrielle, Charlie and
Ron, he could feel a deep hunger welling up inside of him, felt the
animal growling, and bit the inside of his cheek until he could taste
blood.

Sitting next to him, Luna patted Harry’s leg and
favored him with an unusually focused smile. “There are times, you
know, when having is actually better than wanting, Harry,” she
whispered.

Unsure what to say, how to feel about such an
extraordinary statement, Harry nodded in a manner that he hoped was
vaguely knowing.

On his other side, Hermione sniffled loudly.

As
the party congregated in the Burrow’s sitting room, sipping lemonade,
pumpkin juice and white wine, Harry’s gaze followed Ginny. She,
however, seemed to be studiously avoiding him, preferring to grin at
Ron and Hermione, who were flirting shyly with each other. He was about
to join them when he felt a feather-light touch on his shoulder. He
turned to find two startling blue eyes locked onto his.

“’Arry,”
said Gabrielle Delacour in a voice that was both small and resonant. “I
‘ave wanted to talk weeth you so.” She peered up at him so intently
that it was with difficulty that Harry remembered that he was looking
at a twelve-year-old girl.

“Uh, congratulations, Gabrielle.”

She blinked. “What? Oh. Le mariage. Oui. Merçi.”
She bit her lip and looked around, and Harry was relieved to see that
she did indeed look her own age, even if only for a moment. “’Arry,”
she stammered, “I, you ‘ave save my life in ze lac, you are... I ‘ave...” Again she bit her lip, glanced around, and then stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.

For
a moment, the kiss enveloped Harry, and he felt more content that he
had done since before the funeral, as if someone had wrapped him in a
gauzy blanket of sunlight. Then a howl burst up from within him, not of
desire but of shock and outrage. He broke away from the young
part-Veela and spluttered, “I d-didn’t save you, Gabrielle. You were
safe the whole time. B-but you’re v-very welcome.”

She frowned as if she had expected him to react differently.

“And
Gabrielle?” Harry said, and her eyes widened expectantly. “You’re a
beautiful, wonderful girl, Gabrielle. But don’t ever do that to a boy,
ever again. You deserve someone who chooses you, not someone you’ve
enchanted. Do you understand?”

The young blonde’s face fell, and she scurried out of the room.

Noting
the sudden silence, Harry realized that everyone present was staring at
him—from Bill and Fleur, who looked intrigued, to Ron and Hermione, who
seemed concerned, to Luna, who appeared to be vaguely amused.

The
only face not turned towards him was Ginny’s. In fact, he could not
find her anywhere. She too had left the room. Damn. He staggered over
to Luna. “Where is she?”

Luna smiled mistily at him. “Which
one? You’re making it difficult to keep track, Harry. Gabrielle seems
to have run up to the water closet. Ginny went out into the garden, I
think.”

“Thanks,” Harry muttered and began to push through the Delacours, who were standing between him and the exit. “Pardon. Pardon.”

“I’m not very good at noticing these things, Harry,” Luna called to him, “but Ginny didn’t look very happy.”

The
crowd chuckled as he ran from house. Great. He was starring in a bloody
farce. Which seemed about right, since except for about four weeks in
May and June, that’s just what his love life had always been.

He
found her out past where the altar was slowly being covered with leaves
and petals from the garden; she was sitting in an oak, her golden robes
trailing down to just above Harry’s head. “Ginny...”

She
didn’t even bother to look down. “If I’d known you liked them so young,
I would have tried myself years ago,” she said, the softness of her
tone belying the bitterness of the words.

“I don’t, Ginny, please...”

“I
think,” she said, “that the thing that bothers me most is that I
thought we really understood each other. I thought you were being
straight with me at the funeral. If you just wanted to let me down
easy—“

“No, please, Ginny, it’s not like that at all.” The
thought that she might even consider that he would do such a thing made
his stomach twist.

“What is it like, then?” she asked,
gazing down for the first time; he could see that her eyes were puffy
and pink. He wanted to scream. “I liked Gooprielle, too. More than
Phlegm, any way. She seemed so sweet, and shy, and she kept wanting to
talk to me about you, and about Life Debt, and how does one know if
there really is one or not, and I think the reason that I’m crying now
isn’t you, Potter, so don’t get all stupid and noble about it, it’s
just that I’ve only now realized what a silly creature I am.” He began
to interrupt but she stopped him with a gesture of her hand. “I’m a
silly creature, Harry, because I had all the same thoughts and feelings
for you that that little... girl has, but I never had the courage to
act on them the way that she just did. I went through years of thinking
that somehow my noble suffering — pining away for you — mattered, when
it really didn’t. It didn’t make you feel any differently toward me, it
didn’t mean that you owed me anything. There is no Life Debt between
us, Harry. There’s no fate that says that the poor girl has to get the
prince in the end. And I’m really angry with myself that that sort of
crap still pops into my head.” She sniffed. “We’re both almost adults.
We had some laughs, we broke it off. You can kiss whoever you want.”

Harry
put one foot on the tree. “There’s only one person I want to kiss,
Ginny,” he said, “and she’s not blonde, and she’s not twelve and she
didn’t try to use a Veela glamour on me.” He gazed up. Ginny was
looking towards the horizon again. “May I come up?”

She shrugged.

Slowly,
he pulled himself up, branch by branch, until he sat beside her, not on
the same limb, but at the same level. “Do you know what I’ve been
thinking for the past twenty-four hours, since I got here?”

She shook her head.

“I’ve
been thinking that I’m the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. I’ve
been thinking that nothing has ever made me happier than being with
you—not finding out I was a wizard, not meeting Sirius, not even
Quidditch.” She gave a wet laugh. He hadn’t been joking, but was
pleased even so. “I’ve been thinking that instead of spending the last
month at the Dursleys’ dreaming about your touch, waking up thinking I
could catch your scent on my pillow, I could have been writing you,
telling you how much I need you, how much I want you, how much I...
I’ve been thinking that life is short and that if my dad had done to my
mum what I did to you, I might never have been born. I’ve been
thinking—“

She interrupted him with a kiss. It was his second
in a half-hour, and so far beyond the first that he wondered briefly if
there might not be more Veela blood among the Weasleys than the
Delacours.

When they broke apart some minutes later, Ginny’s
eyes were bright and hawk-sharp. “I’m sorry. I interrupted you. What
was it you were thinking?”

He held her face between his hands,
suddenly aware that he knew every line, every freckle, every quirk of
that face, and that he was bound to them and to the woman to whom they
belonged by something stronger and more tangible than any debt, magical
or otherwise. “I was thinking. Erm, I was thinking that you aren’t any
safer away from me than with me, what with your whole family except for
Percy being in the Order, and everyone knowing you’ve been my
girlfriend. Snape and Malfoy certainly know, and if they do, so does
Voldemort. I was thinking that if you get hurt it might destroy me, but
if I don’t get to kiss you again like that, it will definitely kill me.
I’ve been thinking that I need all of the help I can get tracking down
these... they’re called Horcruxes, and they’re little pieces of Tom
Riddle that he’s hidden away so he won’t die, and no one knows Tom
Riddle better than you do, and no one deserves the chance to stop him
more than you.”

She pulled him to her again, her mouth and
tongue small and hot against his. “I was thinking that Professor
McGonagall was telling Mum last night that the school probably wouldn’t
open this fall,” she murmured. “I was thinking that anywhere you let me
go, I will follow, and maybe even where you don’t. I was thinking that
it scares the bloody hell out of me to think of you fighting for your
life and not being there to help.” She leaned her forehead against his.
“If you tell me to stay away, Harry, I will, and I don’t know who that
would make the bigger idiot. But I don’t want to. Stay away, that is.”

“God,
your mum’s going to kill me.” Emotion was boiling up inside of Harry
and it stunned him that feelings that were so good could scare him
quite so much. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” he said.
“I...”

She waited for a moment and then pulled back slightly, peering at him. “Is it about Tom?”

He shook his head.

“Is it about my age, or my safety, or my family or something?”

Again he shook his head, emphatically.

“Well,”
she said, a mischievous smirk playing across her lips, “is it about
some harem of pre-adolescents that you’ve been hiding from me?” He
slapped her knee and she laughed. “What is it then?”

He blurted, “I love you.”

“Oh.”
She looked down at her hands, which were clutching at the shiny golden
skirts of her robes. “Oh.” She looked at him, took a breath and said,
“I love you, too, Harry. I have forever. You know that, right?”

He nodded, and they kissed again.

When time resumed once more, Ginny sighed into Harry’s neck, “I always thought I’d be the one to say that first.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m glad. Even if it’s only because I caught you with your Veela lover.”

“Hey!”
he said indignantly, which made them both laugh. Slowly they climbed
out of the tree. When they were standing before the leaf-strewn altar,
Harry said, “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do anything as
normal as this, Ginny.”

Grinning,
she said, “Wow! Wait till Dad finds out. He’ll play you Harry James
records on that crazy Muggle contraption in the sitting room for
hours.” She took both of his hands in hers. “Whither thou goest, I will
go. Whither thou liest, I will lie.”

His breath caught. He
recognized the quote; someone had written it on the back of one of the
pictures from his parents’ wedding. “Thy people will be my people, and
thy God my God.”

She smiled up at him. “That ought to cover
it, don’t you think?” When he nodded, she said, “Then let’s go inside
and make sure Gabrielle isn’t too upset. Or too hopeful, for that
matter. And that no one thinks I’ve killed you.”

Oh, he thought, but you did, Ginevra Molly. You did.

***

A/N: Yes, another Bill and Fleur’s Wedding fic. In my own defense, this one was originally written just a week after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out! I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

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